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Epson Stylus SX425W

Written by Urszula
Monday, 01 November 2010 16:18
Currently available for £69, Epson's Stylus SX425 wireless MFP costs less than many single-function inkjets. It makes no claims of business-grade speeds or professional-standard photo printing but instead aims to provide an all-round balance of performance and value. The MFP has a 1,200x2,400dpi scanner, decent memory card support and even a tiny colour screen that allows you to – with a fair bit of button-pressing – connect the printer to your wireless network without having to first configure its wireless settings via USB. Because of this, getting the SX425W to talk to your PC is almost as easy over WiFi as it is with USB. Buy in our Onlinestore from £69 Click Here
Last Updated on Wednesday, 03 November 2010 10:17
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Putting Microsoft's Explorer 9 Through Its Paces

Written by Urszula
Monday, 18 October 2010 09:37
In the continuing tug of war between apps and the Web, Microsoft offered a little bit of both last month in its beta release of Internet Explorer 9, the latest iteration of the world's most popular Web browser. IE 9, as it's nicknamed, is designed to make websites look richer, respond faster and behave more like the apps installed on your PC so you forget that you're browsing the Web. Alas, you are still browsing the Web and the occasional sluggish behavior doesn't always magically abate after downloading a shiny new browser. I tested IE 9 against its rivals, including speed tests with stopwatch in hand, as well as overall use tests to see how this new browser handled websites with complex graphics.
Last Updated on Thursday, 06 January 2011 11:33
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Hitachi LS-1000-EMEA 1TB External USB Hard Drive

Written by Urszula

Thursday, 07 October 2010 15:22

Hitachi has been a major name in the Electronics segment manufacturing from the smallest of the accessories to huge gadgets. One segment where they have forayed is the portable hard drives sector and one of their products the Hitachi LS-1000-EMEA 3.5-inch 1TB Simpledrive External USB Hard Drive is the on the focus this time. This well designed drive offers USB 2.0 storage while consuming minimum power and giving your data the security it needs. With software like the Hitachi Backup software, loosing data is history. Does the drive live up to the claims of the company? Read the review to find out.

hitachi

Buy in our Onlinestore from £79 Click Here

Design:

Compact and Light:
The picture on the package does not really do justice to the device. While the image on the package shows the drive to be bulky, it is actually relatively light and compact. At 16.6 cm x 5.9cm x 12 cm, the drive comes under the larger sized drives. It weighs a little over a kilogram making it very light and hence very portable.

Elegant and Classy Design:
It is a white case with a black border on the top and is provided with a stand. The Device feels rigid and once you remove those plastic pieces on the end of the shiny black, it looks classy. The main casing is made of aluminium and there is no trace of flimsiness. The upright design looks great and would look perfect on your desk. The black bits gleam and have a substantial feel to it. Classy and Business like.

The Blue Light Indicator:
There is a dark blue line right close to the base that makes it look elegant. That is primarily for indicating that a drive is being accessed when connected to a PC. The light is bright enough even to be seen in bright daylight and does not blind our eyes like some other drives do. Present on both sides of the device, there is no option to switch on/off the indicator, much to our annoyance.

Easy to Setup:
Gone were the days when installing or setting up something was rocket science. Nowadays, the maximum you need to do to install your hard drives is plug in to your PC. Same is the case for Hitachi LS-1000-EMEA 1TB Hard Drive. Simply connect the power cord to the wall that is the other end of the USB drive to the back of the PC. Voila! You are ready to go. This Plug and Play setup is hot swappable. It can be removed from the PC after being disabled from the Safely Remove Hardware application.

Features:

Compatible with Vista and Mac as well:
The LS-1000-EMEA is compatible with PCs and Mac as well. Amongst the Windows OS’ it works with Microsoft Windows Vista, Microsoft XP and Microsoft 2000. It works with Apple MacOS X 10.4.11 or later versions of that.

This drive is also available in 2TB capacity.

Switches on/off along with your PC:
You do not need to worry if your drive is switched off or not as LS-1000-EMEA 3.5-inch 1TB Simpledrive has the ability to automatically switch on and off along with the PC it is connected to. When connected to the PC and if the PC is switched off, the drive automatically is switched off as well.

Memory and Size:
The Hitachi LS-1000-EMEA External USB Hard Drive is provided with a Memory of 1TB. The internal hard drive in the drive is the Hitachi Deskstar™ 7K1000.C (HDS721010CLA332). 1 GB can store about 350 Mp3 tracks and over 800 high quality digital camera shots. So, 1 TB can store a lot of data. How much? You do the math.

It lacks a Firewire port and the Standard 3.5 “Drive arrives in a FAT32 format and can be formatted to NTFS as well. The rpm of 7200 it has, is an industry standard.

Hitachi Backup Software:
Along with the Drive is provided a software bundle with applications like the Hitachi Backup Software. The Backup software allows you to choose folders that you want to back up. To restore them, one can use either the provided software or access the files from the drive where they are stored. The backup software is very simple and effective to store data. Apart from all this, there is automatic backup as well, which backups your data periodically to minimize data loss.

Performance:

A Bit Noisy:
Enough with all the positives, one major fault that the Hitachi drive has is its noise. The Drive makes a louder than average noise while reading/writing when placed on a desk. Nothing serious, but will be an irritant especially if you are doing some other activity while the drive is being accessed or read. Yet the noise is nothing compared to the other devices in the market these days. In order to cut down on the noise, all you need to do is place the drive on some sort of a cushion. Instant relief.

Good Performance:
When we tried transferring some music into the Drive, we realised it was reasonably fast. 320GB took about 3 hours and 550GB in about 6 hours. So, pretty typical USB 2.0 transfer speeds. A normal format is a matter of minutes but it does not check the whole drive. If you would want to format everything in the drive it would take about 10 whole hours! Our tests revealed that the read speed works out to 25MB/s. A reasonably good performance.

In the Box:

The Hitachi LS-1000-EMEA comes along with the hard drive, a USB 2.0 cable, an AC Adapter, a Quick install guide and a Hitachi Backup Software. Overall, a reasonable stock of accessories is provided.

Warranty:

The Hitachi LS-1000-EMEA 3.5-inch 1TB SimpleDrive External USB Hard Drive is provided with a warranty of 3 year. That is reasonable considering most drives in the market these days offer a warranty of 1 to 5 years as well. You can also get toll free support on weekdays from 7 am to 5.30 pm. Live Chat help and Email tech support is provided as well from the SimpleDrive site. There are FAQs, downloadable software, drivers and tips for troubleshooting provided on the site.

Verdict:

The Hitachi LS-1000-EMEA 1TB Simpledrive is a great drive at a great price. It offers what most users want in an external hard drive – a huge storage capacity, automatic backup and good performance. While the first causalities of its low cost is the absence of a Firewire port and perhaps another USB drive, all in all, the drive is a great purchase and is definitely recommended if you would not mind a little bit of noise.

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Samsung ML-1915 - See it, print it, the ultimate in one touch printing

Written by Urszula
Tuesday, 05 October 2010 09:20
Laser printers have plummeted in price over recent years, and if you're willing to sacrifice colour printing and a few other extras, it's possible to pick up models for under £100. Buy in our Onlinestore from £75 Click Here At £99, Samsung's ML-1915 certainly sits in the budget camp. The design is simple yet attractive, and the all-black chassis makes it stand out from the deluge of beige laser printers. Things are kept uncomplicated on the printer itself, with just three buttons and a couple of LED indicators. Two of the buttons are for power and cancel functions, but the third is slightly more unusual. Called the Printscreen button, it lets you quickly print out a grab of your desktop. A quick press prints the entire desktop, while holding the button down for a couple of seconds prints only the active window. It's an interesting feature, but the ability to activate it via a keyboard shortcut is sadly lacking. For a budget printer, the ML-1915 has a decent-sized input tray that can cope with up to 250 A4 pages. Unlike with many other compact lasers, this tray slides into the chassis and sits flush with the front. Just above the input tray is a single-sheet input, while completed print jobs arrive neatly on the top of the printer. Head round to the back of the printer and the chassis bulges out at the bottom so as to accommodate the length of the input tray. USB and power cables also attach here; those looking to network the ML-1915 will be disappointed to hear there's no Ethernet or WiFi included, nor can you add them later on. Samsung shouts about the ML-1915 being a fast printer, and after running it through a series of tests we're inclined to agree. Once the first page has hit the deck, subsequent prints are spat out at a rate of 18 pages per minute. What's more, it doesn't take long for the first page to arrive, at just a little over nine seconds. As with any laser printer, the cost per print is of utmost importance. Given its budget nature, we weren't at all surprised to find Samsung has used the old trick of shipping it with a special 'starter' toner cartridge. With only enough toner to last 700 pages, it won't be long before you have to splash out on a replacement cartridge. Both standard and high-yield replacement cartridges are available. Online prices vary, but we found the starter available for £45, while the high-yield was £56. And with these lasting 1,500 (3p per page) and 2,500 pages (2.2p per page) respectively, the ML-1915's running costs are impressively low. Equally impressive is the quality of the prints. We took a magnifying glass to some of our resolution tests and found the clarity to be excellent, which is a pleasant surprise considering how much the printer costs. Image quality isn't great, though, and it struggles with areas of gradual shading. But for printing graphs and basic pictures, it's perfectly adequate. It's also worth mentioning that Samsung has done a sterling job with driver support, and the ML-1915 will work with Windows, Mac and a variety of Linux distributions. Samsung - ML-1915 features - Verdict Low-cost lasers frequently disappoint due to excessively high running costs and slow print speeds, but in managing to avoid both of these pitfalls and keep the price under £100, Samsung has produced a mono laser that's hard to find serious fault with. If you've no need for colour prints or simply want a dedicated document printer, the ML-1915 comes highly recommended. Read Original Story Here
Last Updated on Tuesday, 05 October 2010 09:30

Windows 7 Quick Review

Written by Tom Lei
Wednesday, 16 December 2009 16:37
Now that Windows 7 is shipping on a large percentage of laptops, what are the new features it offers, and how is it different from previous versions of Windows? I set out to answer these questions.
Last Updated on Wednesday, 13 January 2010 18:05
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